


i'm taking a stand to escape what's inside me

by enjolraes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, this is my first fic sO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1329247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolraes/pseuds/enjolraes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i hate the taste of cigarettes, but i know i'll be addicted to the smoke that curls out of your lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm taking a stand to escape what's inside me

They have one rule and one rule only: whatever is said in bed between the hours of 11 o’clock p.m. and 5 a.m. stays in there with them. Their mouths are vaults; their heads vast masses of problems piling up like black smoke, swirling menacingly up into the sky.

Derek lays stoic, still. He can’t imagine sleeping any other way. He’s slept like a soldier since his house caught flames and his family was burned to the ground, ashes filling his nostrils, choking him to death. His eyes have stopped stinging when he wakes up from roughly four hours of sleep per night, and instead became hollow shells that reflect the dim light of his lighter, which he flicks absentmindedly. He has a collection: some stolen from gas stations in his youth; another slipped away from Cora when she tried to torch her lungs by inhaling sweet smoke into them; three confiscated from Peter, who liked to light flames in unexpected places: the bathtub, the fridge, inside the toaster he salvaged from the wreck of his past life. The Hale family doesn’t do well with avoidance.

Stiles sleeps in any position he can. After all, he’s used to calling a hospital chair a bed, and burrowing himself into a small space to try and escape what destruction lies in his wake. He counts his way into sleep, every night. He fell into slumber last night, only after counting to 3,243 and living in the absentminded limbo in between dark reality and horrifying nightmares. Stiles fought off the demon possessing him but there are still fireflies that spark within his mind, crooning seductively to him in the darkest hours of the night. 3 a.m. is when his mother passed away, eight years ago. It hasn’t lost the haunting, horrifying feeling gravitating in the pit of his stomach ever since.

For the first three weeks, they didn’t speak to each other, besides the words lilted out of mouths in sleep and grunts in between passing in the hallways and opening tired eyes to face the impending sunlight, the feeling of realization that they were awake all night. Laying next to each other drowning in their own thoughts is intoxicating, and neither Stiles nor Derek wants to kick that addiction. But it’s Scott’s birthday, and he isn’t there to spend it with either of them. Both Derek and Stiles blame themselves for that one.

Stiles dreams fleetingly of Scott, whether in nightmares or reality, he can’t differentiate. He remembers lacrosse games and easy sarcasm, defenses being drawn around not only himself, but his best friend as well. Safekeeping. Scott was his anchor. Stiles closes his eyes and sees blood staining the crooked jaw he knew better than the back of his hand. Stiles doesn’t close his eyes anymore.

Derek organizes deaths into categories: those that were his fault, and those that weren’t. So far, he has his family, Erica, Isaac, and Boyd spiked through his nightmares as easily as his claws used to pierce the people who betrayed him. Scott joined that group. So far, Derek has been responsible for every single death that has begun to drown him.

Stiles opened his mouth to speak thirty-nine times on the twenty-second night he had lay immobile in Derek’s bed. But whether it was from disuse or the absence of ability to formulate words into sentences, he couldn’t make a sound. So he resigned to his demons chasing themselves dizzy inside his mind for another seven hours. Until, the words Stiles had been trying to expel from his clenched jaw unhinged themselves from Derek’s mouth: “I can’t do this whole silence thing anymore.”  
Stiles nodded.

“I have a game,” Derek said, his eyes turning to face Stiles. “It’s crude, but effective. I’ve been coming up with it for five days now.”

Stiles nodded again.

“We tell each other things that we’ve done,” Derek lets his words hang like poison in the already infected air. “Horrifying things. Whoever can come up with the worst one wins. And then we get up and get back to living the lives we used to own the best we can.”

Stiles blinked, eyes interlocking with the dangerous emerald pools that masked all semblance of insanity. They were dull, tired.

“Okay,” he finally unhinged his jaw, letting a wisp of poison of his own into the surrounding heaviness.

Derek stares at the ceiling, pulling his thoughts from the cloud hanging threateningly over them. He chose the first lightning bolt.

“I would dig my claws into my chest after my first girlfriend died, in some vain hope that I would miraculously stop healing and leave my blood behind as a suicide note.”

Stiles picked his brain at where to begin. Derek had uncapped the grenade; he wanted to ignite it. “I stole money off of my mom’s dead body.”

“I killed my first girlfriend.”

“I could feel the nogitsune hurting everyone.” A hollow voice filled the empty shaft of the capsule they were both curled up in, stomachs tied in knots. “It was torturous hurting Lydia; agony hurting Scott; but it let me feel the way your bones cracked. That was pure hell.”

A pause. “I could taste mistletoe all over Jennifer.”

“I slept in the Jeep when my father spent his nights at the police station. Somehow, I woke up in my own bed, and he was never home when I left it.”

“I gave up my alpha power for Cora and I haven’t regretted it since it happened.” Derek paused, a dry sob scaling his throat. “Until Scott’s death was on my hands.”

“I was the one who killed him,” Stiles choked out. He could feel Derek’s glare piercing through him. “I opened the door inside my mind. I saved my father and in return, I let a demon infiltrate me down to my very core. I killed my best friend, and the worst part is, I relished it.”

Derek propped himself up on his side, turning to face Stiles.

“None of that was your fault.” The whisper escaped his perfectly held-up façade, and Derek felt the dam break. There was no turning back from this.

“Hey, that wasn’t the rules.” Stiles swallowed, breaking whatever connection swelled up between them in the past moment. (Twenty-three seconds. Stiles counted.)  
“Top that, Derek Hale.”  
“I’m in love with you.”

Boom. Derek had ignited the spark that exploded the carefully wired cannon they both took refuge in and were trapped within. They were falling, ready to end in a satisfying splat against the concrete. Oh, well. Even hell would be better than the tornado brooding inside of Stiles.

“You were the king on my chessboard because I knew you would be the one to bring me back.”

“I can smell the odor of charred flesh whenever I look into Cora’s face.”

“I hate the taste of cigarettes, but I know I’ll be addicted to the smoke that curls out of your lips.”

Derek may be fire, but Stiles held the torch. He was going to burn this whole goddamn place to the ground, as long as him and Derek stood in the middle, together.  
“Game over,” Derek announced suddenly, and then there was a flash of a white sheet and suddenly there was a body draped over Stiles, the first human contact he’d felt in almost a month and a half. It was intoxicating. Ash didn’t spill out of Derek’s mouth like Stiles expected it to, but instead a flame started in the pit of his stomach, swelling up to swallow them both whole. Stiles devoured him, with the little satisfaction that he was the one who won this battle. The air around them ignited, but the volume of the lava radiating off of the two of them, intertwined on the king-size bed, overpowered it and reduced it to smoke, vaporized and harmless.

For the first time in twenty-two days, both of them fell asleep in a different way. As the sun peeked over the crest of Derek’s apartment, the werewolf and boy who ran with wolves were part of each other, sleeping soundly for the first time in years.

A war continued to wage itself all around them, but they were at a stalemate. All doors were locked tightly, and it wasn’t to keep anything out. It was to keep them in; keep them safe.

Bombs exploded on the horizon, but Derek wasn’t the spark and Stiles wasn’t the flame that carried the torch of destruction to its final destination. That would be left to someone who could fall prey to their demons.

**Author's Note:**

> so i had been listening to demon!stiles 8 tracks mixes all day (two in particular, http://8tracks.com/sarcasm-and-curlyfries/monster and http://8tracks.com/stiles-scott/screaming-let-us-in, check them out) and i started thinking: what would the aftermath be, post-possession? obviously, there would be some sort of fallout. i heard "monster" by imagine dragons, and although i had listened to the song itself probably 20+ times, i saw it from stiles' eyes. my imagination completely took me over, and i'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!


End file.
